Junction Solutions

JunctionISS™
http://www.junctionsolutions.com/junction_iss.asp

Nicole Fitzmaurice
Director of Marketing
250 Parkway Drive
Lincolnshire, IL 60069

info@junctionsolutions.com

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Case Study

American Kiosk Management

American Kiosk Management Clears Up Scalability, Reporting Limitations with JunctionISS™
Founded in 1998, American Kiosk Management is one of the fastest growing specialty retailers in North America. The company operates more than 430 mall carts (kiosks) in shopping malls in the U.S., Canada, Puerto Rico, and other locations around the world. These carts sell the Proactiv Skin Care Solution, which is the best-selling acne treatment in the United States. Its corporate headquarters are in Las Vegas, Nevada, although most of the company’s 1,400+ employees work from the carts. 

American Kiosk Management’s business model is a consultative sale; employees are trained to recognize skin problems and recommend a solution. There are multiple levels of training/certification available both to help employees solve more difficult skin concerns and to advance their careers. The company’s business is based on core values that include customer service excellence, teamwork, accountability, diversity, integrity and ethics, fun, and leadership and development of its personnel.

The Challenge
When American Kiosk Management was small, they had installed Microsoft Retail Management System (RMS) as their point-of-sale (POS) management system. RMS worked well for them at the time, but with the company’s rapid rate of growth it became clear that it was no longer able to keep up with the volume of transactions or the reporting capabilities the company needed. “RMS is a great niche product when you have 15 locations,” says Elisa Sheldon, CFO at American Kiosk Management. “But beyond that it’s like trying to run an enterprise with QuickBooks®. The product simply isn’t designed for the type of high volume business we had become.”

Timely Data
One concern was the ability to obtain timely data from the field. Each cart carries a specific inventory mix, with some basic products available in volume at every location, plus adjustments for local leads. Keeping inventory at the proper levels requires having frequent sales updates through the POS system. As the number of cart locations grew, it became increasingly difficult to drop the information from the POS system into the SQL database.  As a result, keeping inventory at optimum levels became increasingly challenging.

The high volume of data coming in began overloading the RMS system’s capacity as well, resulting in the system disconnecting from the SQL database. When that occurs the data becomes corrupted and has to be re-entered. The system also has to be re-set and checked before it can continue. In the meantime, sales data keeps accumulating, making it more difficult to manage the business on the local, regional, or corporate level with any degree of accuracy.

Reporting
Another challenge was reporting. Again, when American Kiosk Management was small the level of reporting RMS provided and its ability to run those reports was satisfactory.  But as the company grew, when managers would run reports, the processing power required often tied up the entire system for an hour or more, preventing other transactions from being processed. In addition, the information they were able to obtain through these elementary reports was no longer sufficient for running a small enterprise.

The Decision to Upgrade
These and other factors led American Kiosk Management to the conclusion that they needed to upgrade their POS system to one that could handle enterprise-level transaction volume and reporting. This would be a multi-million dollar change, so it’s not one they entered lightly. But it became apparent that if they were going to continue to grow and provide the type of excellent customer service to which they are committed that they would have to have a POS system that could meet today’s needs as well as grow with them. 

The Solution

Sheldon and her IT team began by looking into nine different POS systems, comparing features/benefits, flexibility, scalability, and ease of use. In the end they selected Junction Solutions’ Point-of-Sale software product, JunctionISS™. It’s a decision Sheldon says they’ve been very happy with.

“JunctionISS™ is a marvelous system,” she says. “It is an incredibly powerful design. We can get what we need out of it in the way we want it. It captures 100 percent of the data coming out of the field and drops it into our SQL database in a format we can use immediately.  We’ve even been able to fully integrate it into our Great Plains ERP system to pull all the financial information we need (except the summary financial data) directly. We’ve had it in place for more than a year and I can’t say enough good things about it.”

Flexibility
The flexibility of JunctionISS™ was one of the most important aspects to American Kiosk Management. “No two businesses are exactly alike,” Sheldon says. “All too often when you purchase ‘canned’ software you have to alter the way you run your business to fit the software. That didn’t happen with JunctionISS™. With its open architecture we had the ability to change the software to match the way we do business while still getting the quick turnaround and cost savings that pre-packaged software normally provides.” 

The company has custom-written numerous reports that give managers at various levels, from the carts all the way to top management, the ability to see the state of the business from whatever perspectives they need. For example, a regional manager or cart manager can pull down information on locations, total sales, average sales, who is clocked in at the time and more. Corporate managers can look at the performance of the entire company, a particular region, or even an individual with just a few clicks. All of these reports can be run without impacting the performance of the system, which was a must-have for American Kiosk Management.

Information in the database is updated every 10 minutes, which is as real-time as the company needs it to be. Depending on the location the data from the carts may be transmitted over a dial-up connection, a hard Internet connection, or even a wireless connection. All of it feeds flawlessly into the database where it can be used immediately to make business decisions.

Getting JunctionISS™ in place was seamless as well, according to Sheldon. “Transitioning from RMS to having JunctionISS™ in every location was completed in three months,” she says. “That’s exceptionally fast for a project of this nature. Our development team and the Junction Solutions team worked well together to make it all go smoothly.”

The Benefits

American Kiosk Management has seen both real savings and business process improvements in the year since the company made the switch to JunctionISS™. The ability to monitor the software’s performance in real-time has allowed them to reduce the number of people dedicated to this core system by three full time employees (FTEs). Those resources have now been allocated for other corporate projects. Trouble tickets were reduced from roughly 2,100 to 800 per month.

At the cart level, the company has reduced losses from deposits by 36 percent. Previously, they had no way to tell if the deposits being made into the corporate account were accurate. Now they have an exact figure for the expected deposit within 10 minutes after closing.

Shrinkage
In addition, JunctionISS™ has helped American Kiosk Management reduce shrinkage from the carts. Inventory is managed and accounted for more accurately, allowing them to catch problems sooner. The company can also tell immediately when someone is voiding cash transactions in order to pocket the money. All of this is helping American Kiosk Management return more money to the bottom line.

“We have already processed nearly 1.5 million transactions this year,” Sheldon says. “That is a huge volume for a company like ours. And with sales already up 35 percent this year over last we expect that number to continue to grow. I am confident that not only will JunctionISS ™ be able to accommodate this growth, it will be instrumental in making it happen.  It is simply a tremendous product.”

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Product Names:
JunctionISS™ -
JunctionISS is a scalable, standards-based point of sale and retail store management software application offering a rich set of checkout and store management functions to roll up data, provide control, and manage your cross enterprise supply chain. JunctionISS is designed specifically for retailers looking to manage costs and improve overall efficiency in their day to day retail operations. It gives retailers the ability to manage customers, capture point-of-sale transactions, and also perform back end operations such as purchase order creation, inventory transfers, sales reporting and staff management all from one integrated solution.

JunctionISS is available as a stand alone solution, or integrated to JunctionRES™ for a true cross-channel software solution which allows you to interact with other stores, other sales channels, and provide up-to-the minute inventory availability, pricing, and customer details at the point of sale. JunctionISS is not limited to running on a traditional POS device – retailers can also deploy it on self-service kiosk, mobile (handheld devices) and the Web.

JunctionISS is developed in Microsoft .NET 3.0 which provides a visually compelling user interface, seamless communication across technology boundaries, the ability to support a wide range of business processes, and an easier way to manage your personal information online. Microsoft .NET 3.0 is the new managed code programming model for Windows. It combines the power of the .NET Framework 2.0 with new technologies including: Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Communication Foundation (WCF), and Windows Workflow Foundation (WF).

Current Customers:
American Kiosk Management - American Kiosk Management - Specialty Retailer with mall kiosks primarily representing Proactiv Skin Care Solution
Mrs. Fields – Specialty Retailer for an array of delightful gift baskets, cookie tins, bundles, cookie jars and gift ideas to choose from filled with world-famous cookies
Miles Kimball – Recognized leader in the consumer catalog industry
Crutchfield - Audio/Video electronics for Car and Home
Musician’s Friend - Musical Instruments & Equipment

Product Categories: multi-channel retailers, specialty retailers, GUI Point-of-Sale, In-store operations, Kiosk management, Store management, Open platform, .NET

Current system application or service features and functions*:  Version 4.2